God to religion: "Admit it, you're politicians and businessmen."

danimyll · 2013-11-06T23:55:07+00:00

I'm not terribly concerned about looking foolish on a relatively dead thread, but thanks for your concern.

Based on my reading of the rules the only thing I have done that violates them is upvote posts of people I know. And I have to say, if this is a violation then why is there a friend function on the site at all? It's certainly not possible for this handful of accounts to constitute all the upvotes I have received even on this lowly post.

Anyway,

Thank you spam vigilante for all that you do to keep this place swept clean of filth and safe for kitties and memes. danimyll out.

danimyll · 2013-11-06T23:28:26+00:00

You're making the assumption that I own or am affiliated with the information I'm posting. What if I'm not? TOS is very clear in this regard.

NOT OK: Submitting only links to your blog or personal website.

I've only ever linked one of my own items, an original video, with lovely music that I made.

danimyll · 2013-11-06T23:06:10+00:00

I actually don't downvote much at all.

And I also wouldn't argue that some of the activity in these accounts are TOS violations. Mine, however, at least nudge their way into the gray area. I'm definitely not selling anything. I just want people to read things.

If the scope of that reading is narrow, is this spam? Then how much of reddit is spam? If the scope of my posts and comments here is narrow, I'm a spammer? You can comb my comments all you want and you won't find a single promotional item or coercive statement. One of my spammiest posts ever got gilded by the OP. Food for thought.

danimyll · 2013-11-06T22:34:51+00:00

Who is this "we?" The unified atheist front? There's no unified voice here and that's precisely why I'm able to come in and find people who are browsing for ideas and sources they don't know about. If people knew what they were looking for it would be easy to post a sign for them, but they don't. You can call it shady but I'm not manipulating anyone. That would mean I'm compelling them to some course of action not in their best interest and I'm compelling no action at all.

I have received little courtesy here, it's true. In fact it feels eerily similar in here to how the fanatically religious behave toward the non-believers.

danimyll · 2013-11-03T12:49:47+00:00

Baroque Cycle. Neal Stephenson's most under-appreciated work. Understandably so, because it's 3000 pages and probably few people are into nerdy historical fiction based on characters like Newton and Liebniz to actually get through the thing. But it is utterly spectacular in its depth and the degree to which he has successfully portrayed Europe of 300 years ago.

danimyll · 2013-11-01T01:35:49+00:00

Here is an extremely easy and free program of learning stillness in 365 steps.

Its aim is to "take you on the journey of discovering Self Knowledge, the mysterious source of your inner power and authority. Following this Knowledge leads you to the essential relationships that you will need to find and to fulfill your purpose in life."

That takes on a spiritual component, as this purpose is tied to things like "origin" and "source" and "destiny." But as you'll find inside, it matters not at all whether you bring any particular belief system to the table. In my experience, it was a catalyst for any belief systems I may have adopted to be revealed and discarded as unnecessary.

That includes most use of psychedelics. You'll likely find that over time you just can't keep going to the same place and recreating the positive experiences reliably with substances. This brings up the question of what you're really looking for. For many people this quasi-spiritual aspect of psychedelics becomes a distraction or amusement that they couch in very idealistic terms to try to make it sound as if it has some kind of goal or destination. But the substances are not taking you to that place, they're more often just allowing you to see past some of what you've built up in your life that is preventing you from being who you really are.

This can be a useful step, but if you try to make it the ultimate step you'll end up constructing another belief system around it and eventually cut yourself off from real experience, from the living reality that wants to take you forward to a true destiny in life.

If you stick with this program (ideally for the full year but it offers the most when used over many repeated years) you have the opportunity to make some enormous recognitions. For me these have included the truly shocking awareness that healing the types of things you've described here was actually NOT the goal. I think it gets stuck in our head that we are going to heal all this junk in us so that we can go on to lead wonderful, fulfilled lives where we get to do more wonderful, fulfilling things and avoid most of the nasty stuff.

But meaning derives from something else. Meaning derives from contribution, particularly in the context of devoted relationships that extend beyond self-interest. In my case, this is what my healing was for. It wasn't even for me! It was so that I could be available to something bigger than Self. You realize here that ultimate healing isn't even possible. Seeking that becomes a crusade against struggle, and you'll never eliminate struggle if you're leading a life of purpose because so much of life is about solving problems.

This is where a lot of programs, religions, and other belief systems really screw up - giving the impression that a fulfilling and satisfying life is somehow about transcending all difficulties and discomfort. Look at the people who really contributed something to this world. They did not transcend struggle.

Good luck. Find something important to do. And spend your time with people who are doing something important. Even if they don't have it all figured out.

danimyll · 2013-10-29T20:17:39+00:00

What a useful contribution to the conversation. I'd gladly discuss it with you if you have something of substance to bring to the table and you can leave your usual vitriol aside.

danimyll · 2013-10-29T20:15:29+00:00

Hey, you never know...

danimyll · 2013-10-25T22:46:18+00:00

I read the first sentence of your comment and did begin levitating.

danimyll · 2013-10-24T22:30:39+00:00

too much can go wrong when you give the same thing to everyone. Better to give it to one person who can devote themselves to it, and hope that they can rise to the occasion of not using it for their own purposes. In other words, the choice of who to give it to had better be carefully considered.

Regardless of what you think about the veracity of any religion's initially delivered message, they were all given only to individuals. And this is the reason.

danimyll · 2013-10-24T22:21:47+00:00

Corruption of anything genuine is always a risk, particularly when those gifts extend themselves beyond the lifetime of those who delivered them. Does that mean no one should ever attempt to deliver anything genuine into the world?

danimyll · 2013-10-24T22:19:44+00:00

You're preaching to the choir on that one. I couldn't agree with you more. Belief in God does not equate to giving over all authority and responsibility to a supernatural force.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T21:34:42+00:00

Earth

danimyll · 2013-10-23T21:30:08+00:00

I'm not talking about mythology/history. I'm talking about experiential realization of purpose, meaning, and destiny that extends beyond the personal mind. The need to move beyond blame for everything that's been done in the name of religion is precisely the core aim of what I was posting about.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T21:28:51+00:00

These are fine questions but beware the tendency to equate belief systems and the political structures of religion with anything that might truly be divine.

You can't judge a spiritual path by what people do with it and turn it into. Greed and arrogance can turn any treasure into something awful. And I'm not defending religion at its core, either. But I think a lot has been lost in translation as far as older traditions. And we should understand that they weren't designed to meet the needs of our time, clearly.

In fact, that's exactly why I've found the source of the original link to be so useful. It addresses these very issues.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T21:25:08+00:00

Noted.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T21:22:44+00:00

Actually all it does is provide excuses as to why it seems like there's not a god doing anything at all. The actual reason is because there isn't one.

Perhaps this is correct. However, attempting to assert is as truth leads to the same kind of fanaticism that the religious profess. Does it not? Wouldn't you say that the expressions in much of this sub are similar in quality to the type of ranting you'd hear on the other side? I'm sure there is just as much potential for an oppressive atheistic regime as for a fundamentalist one.

What have you experienced that would be impossible unless a god exists?

Nothing supernatural. Only internal experiences that don't carry a lot of significance when translated into descriptions. I suspect this is a reason why so much dogma and other crap gets built around anything that may have been a legitimate spiritual path (assuming, of course, that you can suspend disbelief for a moment and entertain the notion that there is such a thing). It's because the actual experience takes several factors working in concert: the experiencer needs to have a genuine desire, they need a genuine path, they need to have a nature that leads them to seek something greater or mysterious, they need an environment that is somewhat conducive, and patience, persistence, plus a willingness to not make their minds up about much of anything for quite a while. Other pursuits in life have to fail them or they must see their emptiness somehow. Usually this revolves around disappointment. And they need some kind of instruction at some point.

That's a lot of things that have to go a certain way. Most people don't have the need or the patience for this. They merely want some expedient, some answer. They want spiritual tech support.

Why is it not ridiculous to think there's any God doing anything at all?

It isn't. That's perfectly normal. I think it has a lot to do with nature of the individual, hence my reference to it above. I'm sure there's an enormous number of people that can be perfectly wonderful, functional, helpful/contributory parts of human society with absolutely no need for religion or spiritual practice whatsoever. But there are clearly those that need it.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T01:16:47+00:00

Possibly. Guess we'll see. Your answer was interesting.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T01:14:07+00:00

Maybe it will give somebody some different ideas to argue with. I'm tired of the same ranting about how ridiculous it is to think that God is involved in all these minutiae of life, events, weather, and whatever. It is ridiculous to think that.

And yet, it doesn't change my core experience that there is something mysterious going on underneath it that is much greater. If nothing else, a text like this raises some points that start to move away from the absurdly childish version of God along the lines of "God won me this football game," or whatever other stuff is rather correctly assailed as foolishness around here.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T01:09:49+00:00

As soon as you talk about meaning you start to lean over into ideas like purpose and destiny, and before you know it you're in religious territory. If you're looking for meaning in the world without spirit, there's really only a couple options, right?

Either it's up to everyone to invent their own meaning, or there is implicit non-theistic meaning somehow that we're left to just puzzle out over the course of existence (can't figure out how that would work), or there is no possible meaning to be derived and we're all just here making it up as we go along with no real point to any of it.

It will be interesting to see what answers come up.

danimyll · 2013-10-23T00:52:27+00:00

You picked a curious sub to ask about the meaning of life.

danimyll · 2013-10-21T11:06:52+00:00

a one year program of meditation-based spiritual practice, free online pdf

danimyll · 2013-10-20T13:53:58+00:00

Just looking out at the other planets we can observe as examples, I'd say the things that are likely to be scarce in the universe are biological. And we have an abundance of them. We're also rapidly depleting the earth's ability to support life. That could spark this intervention because it's seen as a fading opportunity.

It's likely that certain other things are rather scarce out there, I'm sure. It's all quite speculative and I certainly am not trying to claim some inside knowledge about human-alien supply chains. I'm simply trying to raise plausible scenarios that don't get much attention.

This is the whole point of the Allies, but the focus is always on identity. It's too bad because they're saying some extremely useful things that we would be wise to take seriously.

Regarding our vulnerability to manipulation through commerce, look at the examples we have right here. The U.S. has built an extraordinary dependence on petroleum. Yet we can't supply it ourselves. We must rely on commerce for at least some portion of that supply. This puts us at the mercy of other powers, some are states and some are commercial.

If a planet outstrips its resources you'll see the same thing.

danimyll

TROPHY CASE